Failte reader. Welcome. This is a short story about a farmer, a fox and some chickens written using Hiberno English, the English spoken in Ireland. Not a dialect, a language in itself. The glossary of terms you see with an asterisk * is below the story. Enjoy!
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One day, a young farmer, whose father had recently been taken to the afterlife by a cursed affliction, went out to search the orchard for eggs. The young farmer had a hunger on him for a protein-rich breakfast. Shouldering the responsibility of such a large working farm and its lands at the young age he was had the needing for a good breakfast on the man.
This year, for the first time, he’d decided to leave the chickens loose in the orchard at the breaking of the spring. “’Twill* help clean up the pest-ridden fallings of fruit as the harvest season sets upon the year,” the old peddler had told them when passing through town the previous winter. Nobody local had heard tell of a chicken in an Irish orchard before that time.
As the spring came in so the chickens were put out to eat the fallen fruit from the trees, their stalky legs too short to reach up to steal the new buds bursting on the branches. There hadn’t been time to move the coop. Men were needed to transport it, so the young farmer had made a makeshift coop in the corner of the orchard until such a time came when he’d be able to move the bigger one in.
***
With springtime also comes training season and chickens weren’t the only animals that would *hanker for apples. Around the same time as the young farmer was putting out his chickens to scratch and peck, a young *skulk of foxes was taking its first steps towards adulthood. That breezy evening as she readied her cubs to leave the den, downhill with the gust, blew the sweet scent of apples perfumed with, though the vixen was uncertain how, chicken.
***
As a child, the farmer had *got up to quite a bit of mischief with his friends. They’d go *knick-knacking, tractor hopping and *boxing the fox or *haking apples. He loved all the games except boxing the fox. Aware of the interrelationship between human and nature, he was careful to be kind to all creatures. When the boys would set a box up to fall onto the fox as it sniffed for fallen apples, he’d *head off down to the other end of the orchard, hake a few apples and pretend to go home.
One evening, a short time after the *lads had left the trap set to check the next morning, he saw a flash of rua that could only be the red of the Madra Rua. A fox had come up the hill to find the orchard. The boy didn’t dare move. Though a child, he knew both of the foxes’ cunning, and its sensual intelligence. He’d watch to see how it behaved.
Suddenly, he heard a bang and a yelp. It wasn’t loud enough to be a gun. There was nobody around. “It must be the box!”, he cried. The boy ran up through the orchard, slowing down as he got closer to the tree with the box. He’d have to be careful the other lads wouldn’t find out what he’d done. They’d *slag the life of him if they found out, and he had a tough reputation to uphold. He came from a big farming family.
The young gossún crept carefully up to the box and knelt beside it, putting his flat, but rather large palms for a child his age, around its top. The fox calmed, sensing someone had come. The boy spoke gently and reassuringly.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m not like the others. I know you’re just hungry.”
The fox remained calm. Its nose nudged against the box gently.
“Please trust me. I am going to lift the box off you.”
Slowly, he lifted the box off the fox. “It’s a vixen,” he realised. Her sharp eyes pierced his. She crouched low. For a moment, it felt like time had stood still. The boy put his hand out towards her, fingers curved down so as not to be threatening. As if giving thanks, the vixen’s nose flicked off his hand as she lowered her muzzle before shooting out of the box, across the orchard and back down the hill.
***
“It’s been a long time since I went near that orchard,” she thought. “Times are different now. I have a litter to feed.” Growling for her cubs to follow quietly, she skulked up the hill. The cubs, focusing hard on their training, snuck along behind her, sometimes a little too loudly when the excitement of such an adventure took them over. They’d never been up to the top of the hill before. “There are humans there,” their father, Reynard, had told them repeatedly. "Humans are dangerous."
“Not all of them,” Vixen would think, a memory stirring in her mind, though she'd never bark it aloud.
Reynard wasn’t around now. Vixen had had a lucky escape with the cubs after a large male had attacked. Reynard, though he had kept them safe, did not last the night afterwards. It was just her and the cubs now, and that meant getting into the orchard.
Before long, they were in. The cubs were elated, sniffling through leaves and broken twigs to find the sweet, succulent apple cores hidden in the dirt. As they made their way up to the top of the orchard, thieving apples as they went, one of the cubs sniffed something different. “What is it, Mam?” he asked. Vixen threw her eyes around the orchard, spying the coop. She salivated. “It’s a very good dinner for us all,” she said, tongue flicking at the thought of such a meal, and the opportunity to show her cubs a live kill.
“All of you, stay as close as possible to my hind. And stay quiet!” The night was thick with darkness, but her specially adapted eyes could see enough to move forwards. Her eyes were up, head darting left to right, alert for danger. “See that patch of wood on the right? On my count, we run towards that, as fast as possible. Ready? 3. 2. 1. Go.” The foxes made a dash for it.
Not one of them made it.
***
The young boy knew both of the foxes’ cunning, and its sensual intelligence. Now a young man in charge of a large working farm, he held onto that knowledge. When he’d finished building the makeshift chicken coop, the young farmer had dug a trench around it, wide enough for a man to cross, deep enough to capture a fox.
One morning, he went out to search the orchard for eggs. Sometimes, the chickens would lay a clutch in amongst the trees instead of the coop. Whistling while he searched, at first he didn’t hear their yelps. But as he drew closer to the coop, where he’d finish by letting the chickens out, a noise startled him. He heard it again, and again.
“Jaysus,* is there something in the trench?” He ran over and heard a low, angry growl. Peering over the side, making sure to stay at a safe distance, the farmer spied his catch. First, he just saw the big fox. “Ah, the poor *créatúr. Then, out came one, two, three, four, five cubs. “It’s a vixen.” She was still growling, protecting her little pack.
He knelt towards the trench, looking directly at the vixen. Her piercing eyes fixed on him. The growl softened to a low rumble as the farmer spoke. “I won’t hurt you. I’m not like the others. I know you’re just hungry.” The vixen’s head tilted in curiosity. She’d heard those words before. As a cub, her grandmother used to tell her a story that her grandmother had told her, whose grandmother had told her, and whose mother had told her.
“Not all humas are bad. I was once trapped in a box in the middle of an orchard by a group of young *fellas who thought it sport. In a saving moment, didn’t another one come along, quietly tell me he wasn’t like them and then lift the trappings of the box up off me! He had a stare gentle and kind, a smile equal, and the senses of the Madra Rua.”
As the vixen crouched staring at the young farmer, she heard the words of her grandmother’s story come from the man’s mouth. “This is the orchard. He is that young boy.” Her cubs were frightened. Would he behave the same towards them? Could she risk it?
The young farmer gathered some food scraps from around the yard and berries from the trees. He made sure there was enough for them all to eat and threw it into the trench. He wanted to show her he could be trusted. He knew the cunning and the instinct of the fox. The young farmer had a goal in mind.
A little later, the foxes’ bellies full, the farmer slowly lowered his hand towards Vixen, his fingers curled so as not to be threatening. She tipped her nose up to touch it. He held it there, her nose resting gently on the back of his hand. “I’m going to lift you out now. I’ll do it as gently as I can. Then, I’ll lift out the *wee’uns.” She let him lift her family out. The cubs didn’t know what a wicked human was. They leapt gleefully all over his bent legs and under his arms.
Their mother stood stock still, her sharp eyes piercing his. “You can’t *ate the chickens,” the farmer said. “From now on, I’ll leave you out enough scraps to attract a few rodents. That way, you’ll have live prey to teach your wee’uns to hunt, and enough food to be getting along with all summer. If I find you at a chicken mind, I’ll skin you, scalp you and stuff you. *Have we a deal?”
Vixen looked longingly at the chicken coop for a moment, then down at her cubs. There were two lessons for them to learn that day. “Come here,” she growled with the loving softness of a mother. She told them what the farmer was promising. They would need to make this promise too, for when they were older out hunting alone.
“What have you learned from our adventure?” she asked.
“To watch out for holes in the ground,” one cub squeaked.
“That where it smells sweet, we can eat,” squeaked another.
“To chase where the chickens sleep,” piped a third.
“That not all humans are harmful,” added the fourth.
The fifth, the quietest and most attentive of the cubs spoke last.
“That while we watch for holes where it smells sweet, we must be careful not to eat the chickens up within that coop or else we’ll end up on a sharpened crook.”
Vixen smiled at her quietest, cleverest cub. “That is right. From this day forth, we vow to the farmer never to touch his chickens. He is kind to us. We must be kind and keep our word in return.” She looked back at the farmer, nudging her cubs towards him as a mark of acceptance and respect. He twisted to reveal his palm, allowing her white, lower-muzzle hair to graze off it as she rose to leave.
And so it came to be that the farmer, his chickens, a vixen and her cubs spent a spring and summer together in the orchard, the chickens and foxes thieving scraps and scratchings from each other, the farmer snatching moments to marvel at the miracles of nature. Not for many a year afterwards would a pack so unusual be seen, yet for miles around, both fox and man knew the story of the Orchard Thieves.
Hiberno English Glossary
- ‘twill: it will
- Hanker for something: verb - to long or want for something.
- A skulk of foxes: skulk is the term for a 'pack' of foxes.
- Get up to mischief: play childhood pranks that might get you into a bit of trouble, but wouldn't cause any harm.
- Knick-knacking: knocking on doors and running away.
- Tractor hopping: jumping onto the backs of tractors while they're driving through the fields or down the road.
- Boxing the fox: robbing apples in an orchard. Robbing means stealing.
- Haking: another word for robbing.
- Head off somewhere: go somewhere. Think of a sailor finding the ship's heading - the direction it's going.
- Lads: young males. *Can also be used to refer to a mixed-sex group.
- Madra Rua: a fox. Madra is dog in Irish, rua is the red colour of the fox. (not the colour red).
- Slag the life of someone: make a joke of someone.
- Gossún: young boy or lad.
- Jaysus: "Jesus" as in Christ. An exclamation with many meanings, often surprise or shock. Said as 'jaysus' so as not to break the blasphemy law and end up in prison.
- Créatúr: a term of endearment for a human or animal in a sorry state. Creature in English.
- Fellas: the same as lads.
- Wee’uns: Young children (in this case, the young cubs.)
- Ate: The past tense of 'eat' used in a present tense sense.
- Have we a deal?: Omitted auxiliary verb "do" to ask a question. "Do we have a deal?"
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